First played the demo back in January and instantly fell in love. Picked the full game up during the Steam Summer Sale and became addicted. Don't think I've ever felt more accomplished in a video game than when I summited Kami, and Cairn might be in my top 5 games of all time now. Cannot wait for the DLC next month, and eventually plan to do my own free solo attempt
Just finished Episode 3 and I'm really interested to see where the Venus mission goes from here.
Initially, I assumed it was just going to be a crewed flyby, as both NASA and the Soviets had Venus flyby plans in the early 70s but were canceled. NASA's mission was scrapped due to the cancellation of the Apollo Applications Program, while the Soviet's never went ahead due to the failure of the N1 rocket. However, with the Chief Designer wanting to land on the surface, I cannot tell if they're going for a manned landing (which would be almost certainly suicide for the crew as they'd have no way back into orbit due to the dense atmosphere).
However, looking at the real Soviet Venera missions makes me wonder if it will be unmanned. In our timeline, Venera 7 was not just the first probe to successfully land on Venus, it was the first probe to land on another planet period. According to Wikipedia, it was launched on August 17, 1970 and landed on December 15. Due to the "race for the base" on the Moon, the Soviets must have pulled all the funding from the Venera program in this timeline.
Not only would landing on Venus be a significant scientific achievement, but being the first country to do so would certainly be a massive win over the US for the Soviets, especially coming not long after the first manned Moon landing.
